Product description

Fingerprints of the Gods is the revolutionary rewrite of history that has persuaded millions of readers throughout the world to change their preconceptions about the history behind modern society. An intellectual detective story, this unique history book directs probing questions at orthodox history, presenting disturbing new evidence that historians have tried - but failed - to explain. This groundbreaking evidence includes: Accurate ancient maps that show the world as it last looked during the Ice Age, thousands of years before any civilisation capable of making such maps is supposed to have existed. Evidence of the devastating scientific and astronomical information encoded into prehistoric myths. The incredible feat of the construction of the great pyramids of Egypt and of megalithic temples on the Giza plateau. The mysterious astronomical alignments of the pyramids and the Great Sphinx. The antediluvian geology of the Sphinx. The megalithic temples of the Andes. The myths of Viracocha and Quetzalcoatl. The pyramids of the Sun and the Moon in Mexico. The doomsday calendar and eerie memories of the ancient Maya. The warning from the Hopi of Arizona.

Author information

Graham Hancock is the author of the major international bestsellers The Sign and The Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods and Heaven's Mirror. His books have sold more than five million copies worldwide and have been translated into 27 languages. He is an extremely successful investigative journalist, having been Editor of Conde Nast's Traveller magazine and East Africa Correspondent for the Economist. His public lectures and TV appearances, including the three-hour series Quest For The Lost Civilization, have put his religious and historical theories before audiences of tens of millions. He has become recognized as an unconventional thinker who raises legitimate questions about humanity's history, religion and prehistory and offers an increasingly popular challenge to the entrenched views of orthodox scholars.

Review quote

"Intriguing" Sunday Times "Hancock challenges orthodox history with extraordinary theories of a vanished early civilisation destroyed by a cataclysm... However heretical his arguments, his sweep through the ancient world is arresting and audacious" Daily Mail

Editorial reviews

Poking about through an assortment of grand earthly mysteries, Hancock (The Sign and the Seal, 1992) cobbles together a fascinating theory that proposes a lost civilization lying behind the conundrums. Why is it that the ruins of central America appear to show such a profound knowledge of spherical trigonometry millennia before that branch of mathematics was to find currency in the West? How is it that the great temples in Peru and Egypt show a clear understanding of the precession of the equinoxes way prior to its "discovery" by Hipparchus? All of these ancient monuments depict bearded Caucasian men in their sculpture. Pourquoi? Drawing on an amazing wealth of materials - from a close reading of mythology to geological texts, from archaeo-astronomy to rarefied mathematics - Hancock devises a theory that posits a highly evolved civilization that was wiped clear off the face of the earth during the cataclysmic happenings that attended the retreat of the last ice sheet. A resulting massive crustal displacement in turn might have buried the evidence of this advanced culture, leaving only a few survivors to pass on their knowledge to succeeding generations. Egyptian, Olmec, Mayan, and Aztec civilizations all speak of men - Viracocha, Quetzalcoatl, the bearded men - who brought great wisdom into their midst (though why they didn't pass along the principle of the wheel to the Maya is an equal mystery). Where did these learned men come from? Hancock has evidence to suggest Antarctica, explained via a combination of crust movement and the odd fact that the topography of Queen Maud Land appears on a map dated 1513, when it was - and had for millennia been - under ice. He also has evidence that the next apocalypse may be just around the corner. A fancy piece of historical sleuthing - breathless, but intriguing and entertaining and sturdy enough to give a long pause for thought. (Kirkus Reviews)